The Meridian Exhibition Centre is Winkler’s best kept secret, but Meg Dias is trying to change that.
The city’s recreational programmer is hoping the new Move It Mondays campaign will get Winklerites into the facility more over the next few months.
“Winter blues are a real thing, living in Manitoba,” she says, noting this winter’s lack of snow further complicates matters, as even the usual fun outdoor activities are a no-go. “So I thought what better time to be able to have some extra turf time here?”
Move It Mondays started this week and runs until April 15. The centre has added extra turf time availability in its fieldhouse every Monday morning to complement several other activities happening in the building that day.
Parent and Tot Turf runs from 9-10:30 a.m. Mondays followed by track walking sessions from 9-11:30 a.m. (though, technically, the walking track is open all day, every day of the week for the public to use, barring special events), Parent & Tot Skate from 10:15-11:15 a.m., and then an Open Turf and Lawn Games slot from 10:30-11:30 a.m.
All these events are free, but there’s also 18+ hockey running Mondays from 9-10 a.m. at $5/person.
MEC has teamed up with Central Station Community Centre as well to provide weekly snacks for people who come out to enjoy the morning’s activities.
Dias hopes people who perhaps have never set foot in the exhibition centre will take the opportunity to see what it all has to offer.
“We want to create a really welcoming environment for people to come in and try out the turf, try out the Parent & Tot skating,” she says. “Just get people comfortable with our facility and feeling at home here.”
The Parent & Tot programs are a great way for parents of young kids to get out of the house, Dias notes.
“I think a lot of people think that maybe your kid has to be able to skate,” she says, stressing that certainly isn’t the case. “We had mums out there today with babes in strollers.”
They also have skate trainers available for kids to use for balance, built by local high school welding students.
“And it’s not just for tots to skate,” Dias says of the program. “It’s parents, grandparents … we just want to get people moving.”
“We know the importance of keeping our bodies moving, not just for physical health but for mental health, especially living in the climate that we do,” she says.
“I’m pretty passionate about getting people out, but I’m also passionate about building communities and recreation,” Dias adds. “For me, if we can get people in the building and I can see new families chatting with each other and people just grabbing a muffin and a coffee that Central Station brought and taking the time to pause and have a conversation, I feel like there’s some serious value to that.”
While the focus on Mondays is to give people a taste of what all the facility has to offer, many of these programs, and others, are available on other days of the week as well.
There’s skate and turf times for seniors and home school families, free public skating sessions, $5 skate times, $5 sticks and pucks sessions, and shinny hockey time slots.
You can check out the full schedule at themeridianexhibitioncentre.ca.
Photos by Rick Hiebert/Voice
